The importance of mid-tier gaming

One of the biggest reasons for stagnation in the mainstream gaming market is the tendency of big publishers to focus on the large, blockbuster titles. With the current model of huge, multi-million dollar releases every year, there are clearly signs of fatigue in the gaming market. As such big titles compete for the tightening consumer wallet, the question should be asked whether such a model is sustainable and what could be done to fix the situation. 

This is where mid-tier games could fit comfortably in the niche; Jim Sterling has recently championed the use of such titles, citing the practice as a boost to creativity in the industry, especially during the peak times of the PS2 era. Jim is indeed correct that mid-tier games could produce a more sustainable niche for big publishers. 

With the costs of development skyrocketing, many game publishers have engaged in shady practices to boost their profits. Imagine how much better games would be if hundreds of millions of dollars and the fate of the developers themselves didn’t hinge on their profitability; there would certainly be more creative risks taken, as well as fewer implementations of anti-consumer ‘features’ such as loot boxes.

There is a need for more ‘useful’ games; ones that may not make all the money all the time but don’t need to be so big to be profitable. Given the tightness of customer wallets, this model would arguably be more sustainable; there’s a lot more room for someone to buy a couple of £20-to-£30 games on top of a big budget £60 blockbuster, rather than expecting them to pay for three or four such ‘must-have’ titles (representing nearly a £240 outlay – almost as much investment as buying a whole new console!). In this way, mid-tier games could be the bread and butter of a mainstream gaming industry that currently stands on unstable footing.

While some may argue that game dev costs are spiralling out of control as technology is pushed further and further with each yearly release, the question should be asked as to whether such costly development is always the way to go. Surely for a risk-averse big company, smaller and less costly games could represent a salvation for creativity. Instead of risking hundreds of millions on a single title, and the jobs that come with those big bucks, surely it would be more sustainable to have a varied portfolio where games can make profit at all levels of the market. This practice also represents an insurance policy against disaster; if your big, AAA blockbuster falls by the wayside one year and suffers from terrible sales, then you can fall back on a portfolio of smaller, profitable titles to shore up the earnings before the next instalment.

As mainstream gaming continues into the next generation, big companies will undoubtedly need to review their strategies and cost-efficiency. If a game doesn’t need to have the best graphics, why bother spending so much and then push that cost onto the consumers? Many such players will be content with paying a little less while getting a slightly less graphically-intense game, and in fact will probably be more likely to buy the game ‘on-top-of’ a AAA £60 purchase. Mid-tier games represent an interesting avenue for a more sustainable, more creative gaming future, so hopefully these will be utilized correctly and more often in the coming years.

The frustrating potential of mobile gaming

In-app purchases, cheap cash-in microtransaction farming games, Candy Crush Saga, touch screen controls. The list of frustrations that I have with mobile phone gaming is a long, aggravating one. But do I think that mobile gaming will never be a legitimate platform? Controversially, I would say no. Mobile gaming has the potential to be a fully-featured and satisfying game platform in the future.

This may shock some of the more ‘hardcore’ gamers out there, many of whom will have looked upon the mobile gaming landscape with scorn and mockery. The word ‘casual’ is thrown around a lot when discussing mobile gaming. There is a kind of stigma in the topic where gamers feel that some genres are more legitimate pursuits than others. In terms of simple, ‘time waster’ games that are only made to entertain during short commutes, perhaps this criticism is somewhat valid. However, when talking about mobile gaming’s potential, there is certainly a possibility of more worthwhile gaming pursuits. 

In terms of raw power, the mobile phone market is more capable than it’s given credit for. Razer, a brand famous for PC gaming products, have even found value in the mobile gaming market. The Razer Phone carries 8GB of RAM on top of a state-of-the-art Snapdragon processor that matches rival flagship brands. The result is a mobile powerhouse that can output 120Hz gameplay, a standard not to be sniffed at by any means. 

Even the games themselves are quickly starting to catch up; the surreal experience of playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on a mobile phone is testament to that fact. The humble smartphone is more than capable of handling complex 3D gameplay and graphics. The presence of Minecraft, Don’t Starve, and a growing indie market show that there is more than just Candy Crush available. With mobile’s signature portability, versatility and multi-tasking capabilities, it’s arguable that the platform could even become a preferred medium for the right kind of gamers if the technology is there. The Nintendo Switch is evidence of the fact that there is a desire to play fully featured, low-compromise games in a portable form, and undoubtedly it won’t be long at all until mobile processors come within grasping distance of Nintendo’s highly-successful machine. 

So what are the problems with mobile gaming? Firstly, it has to be said that those gamers who scoff at Candy Crush have a point. The install base of lifestyle users, as well as the barriers of simplistic touch-screen controls, make it difficult to see any real, quality entries in the smartphone space. Why would anybody create a relatively high-price, complex and rewarding phone game? It will make practically nothing in the face of massive, saturated competition that churns out exploitative low-price, free-to-play games that can capture the lifestyle market easily. Gamers on mobile are less tolerant of any game that has a price tag of more than a couple of pounds, so there is a massive culture change required from gamers on mobile expecting everything for free.

On top of that, touch screen controls just suck. To relate back to San Andreas, attempting to play the game on anything but a controller is an infuriating, painful experience. There is no kind of tactile feedback to help your hands know what to do and all you can do is vaguely rub the screen hoping it can catch some semblance of what you want to do. Not only that, but this control scheme means there are great finger-sized areas of screen being entirely blocked out from view. To play any kind of game that’s more complex than swiping at fruit, a controller is most definitely the way forward.

What mobile gaming needs is a unifying standard of controller. Much like how the Xbox 360 wired controller for Windows became the de-facto controller mapping for games on PC that needed joypads over keyboards, there needs to be a brand or product on mobile that universally becomes adopted and imitated as ‘the’ standard for controller maps. If we can decide on how to control the games, then we can start to see more complex games on the market as gamers become adaptable to the playstyles of mobile. I feel that we’re almost there, in fact, as gamepads on mobile start to look to console controllers for inspiration. My own controller for mobile is actually a modified 360 gamepad with a frame for attaching the phone, which is connected to the joypad by Bluetooth. The result is a much more satisfying experience than touch-screen controls, and it works with a wide variety of apps.

Ultimately, the key to solving the problem with the mobile market’s saturation of terrible games is simpler in theory than it is in practice. It requires a wider adoption by more core gamers, and voting by our wallets. If it is proven that there is a profitable market for more satisfying, premium games on mobile, then you can be guaranteed that there will be development. If there is one area where mobile excels it is in quickly and dramatically adopting a profitable idea. 

Until this happens though, gamers will continue to view the mobile market with scorn and righteous mockery, which makes the mobile market one of the more frustrating problems facing gamers today. Unfortunately with its widespread adoption by non-gaming users, its Candy Crush saturation, and its lack of a unified control scheme, it is difficult to see mobile gaming, for all its great potential, become the legitimate and vastly enjoyable platform that I know it can be. But solve those problems, and mobile gaming stands a real chance of being a lovable gaming platform, where the real benefits of smartphones in their growing power and versatility can shine through in a gaming context.

DLC vs loot boxes: make it worth buying

On the one hand, we have a practice that single-handedly demolished a gaming brand’s goodwill (loot boxes), and on the other, we have expansions and DLC which, when practiced correctly, offer a way to get extra revenue for making actual, valuable content that extends a game’s value proposition in a pro-consumer way.

We all hate when gamers are nickel-and-dimed into buying content that should have been in the base purchase of a full-retail-price game. Not only this, more nefarious practices have become more commonplace in the last year; loot boxes totally ruined Battlefront 2 and Shadow of War and led to a controversy that left waves rocking the industry for potentially years to come. Utilizing the ethically-questionable methods of gambling, loot boxes inherently represent greed and cynicism in its worst form. Unlike DLC, there is no redemption for the loot box.

On the other hand, with DLC there is a very clear distinction between the wrong and the right way to go about business. Gamers undoubtedly have a love-hate relationship with DLC, as since its widespread adoption in the 360/PS3 generation it has led to some good and a lot of bad, potentially even paving the slippery slope that landed us into the dubious territory of the loot box. There are good DLCs and bad DLCs, and the distinction needs to be made.

The wrong way to go about offering videogame DLC is clear and obvious; stripping content already expected of the game to sell back as an ‘expansion’, holding DLC hostage as a pre-order bonus, or the method most popular in mainstream gaming today which is to sell a ‘season pass’ that is often costed at more than the initial outlay of the game itself. The list goes on of every example of DLC gone anti-consumer. A dishonourable mention goes to the selling of pointless extraneous content such as costumes that would otherwise have been present in the game as a reward for player activities. The much-maligned ‘horse armour’, as seen in Oblivion, is a famous example of how costume DLC can go badly, badly wrong.

However, the important distinction between the practice of DLC and loot boxes or microtransactions is that as a method of keeping player engagement and maintaining a profitable player base is that there is a way to do DLC in the right way. For example, most gamers would agree that The Witcher 3’s DLC is a shining example of how to behave in an otherwise cynical industry.

The best examples of DLC are those that expand the game’s playtime and replay value. Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption excelled in their own DLC offerings, with the content being so meaty that they were later sold as full games (Undead Nightmare, Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and Damned). The content described was great simply because it offered a valuable expansion that was tangible to players.

A more modern example of DLC done right can be seen in Resident Evil 7. Capcom already earned my goodwill in this case because they delivered a stellar mainstream horror experience, and possibly the best AAA game to come out in years. Not only this, but the deal was sweetened with the initial offering of the free ‘Not a Hero’ DLC. While it suffered from its own issues, there is no denying that there is a good sign in giving an expansion for free that most unscrupulous publishers would eagerly strip out and monetize.

While yes, the concept of the dreaded ‘season pass’ reared its ugly head with Resident Evil 7, the sheer excellence of the content proved to be worth downloading. The banned footage, which gave us an actual expansion and elaboration on the game, used the mechanics to a great effect that changed the whole tone of the product. Simply through delivering something worth buying, Capcom made DLC that I am willing to buy.

It feels so painfully stupid to say this, but 90% of doing DLC right is not rocket science; it’s just to deliver a good package that is worth the price. Resident Evil 7’s DLC was fun to play and offered something different and new to the main experience. If this, and the other good examples of game DLC are anything to go by, it’s that there is plenty of gamer goodwill out there, if you treat gamers right. It may come as a shock to EA games, but the way to sell a product is not to manipulate the customer, or to engage in anti-consumer practices, it’s simply to make something worth buying. 

Shadow of War Review

Shadow of War is a game that is simultaneously agonising and rewarding. While the experience itself is competently crafted, with eye-popping graphics, an eye for detail and possibly the best enemy-AI system to come out in the last ten years, the final package is a big downfall for a franchise that started so well in its first outing. Unfortunately, the game’s size is its biggest nemesis; forcing anti-consumer mechanics and creating a poor, over-bloated and over-long storyline that fails to showcase what should have been a triumph.

 

The storyline continues directly on from Shadow of Mordor; involving the creation of a New Ring.
Screenshot from in-game.

Shadow of Mordor was perhaps the best licensed video game since Batman: Arkham Asylum. Taking inspiration from the latter, the first entry into the franchise married satisfying rhythm-based button-mash combat with a well-designed open world to create what was at the time the best single player title yet to come out in the PS4/Xbox One generation. If that wasn’t enough, the exciting Nemesis system was brought into the world, creating a platform for emergent stories that put enemy AI in the spotlight. Combat became much more dynamic and exciting, as did the enemy forces themselves. 

It’s a shame that Shadow of War doesn’t follow suit. Despite a strong attempt, the game ultimately buckles underneath the great weight of its horrible design choices. The result is an experience that seems to both hate and love itself; it is just as ready to reward you as it is to destroy you and laugh at your attempts to enjoy the game, oh, and did you know that you could be slightly less annoyed by buying the Mithril Chest for real money?

One of the most controversial aspects of Shadow of War is the inclusion of loot chests, a practice that has been somewhat over-discussed recently as an anti-consumer pricing model, especially for a full-price game. To keep this aspect of the review concise; the inclusion of loot boxes here is painfully unnecessary and clearly informs some parts of the game to be more irksome than they should simply to attract players to dropping cash, which is not okay at best, and a disgusting and shady practice at worst. Given the game’s ambition, it’s probable that the sheer level of investment and production value that went into building Shadow of War was too high to profit feasibly from a simple full-retail purchase. In this case, my argument is this: if your game fails to profit in such a way, that’s a failing of your own budgeting and not of the market itself. 

 

The graphics are so sharp that this orc's eyes actually gave me nightmares.
Screenshot from in-game.

As for the presentation and production values; yes, every aspect of Shadow of War is out of this world, graphically speaking. This game really took my new PC out for a spin and it was an interesting experience to see the sheer power of graphical and gameplay fidelity made possible by ever-evolving technology. The textures often hit jaw-dropping levels of detail on every little part of Mordor. There is little to criticise here, except perhaps that some of the maps look a little bit drab and rely too much on that modern gaming crutch of brown and grey colour schemes, except for maybe one or two specific areas in the game.

The gameplay itself is the real wow-factor here though; the Nemesis system has evolved into its own and is suitably impressive, especially for a game of this scale. There is a multitude of strategies that become viable when considering the weaknesses of the multiple Orcs that one will face on their journey through Mordor. The sandbox nature of the combat that allows one to exploit different weaknesses through experimentation with so many intricately-overlapping systems is a wonder to behold. Many times, I found myself pleasantly surprised with how robustly the game’s engine could create a multitude of interesting scenarios. 

 

One of my favourite Orc Nemeses, was obsessed about his Black Blade but didn't win a single fight with me.
Screenshot from in-game.

Unfortunately, there was a desperate need for some extra tweaking here: while the system itself encourages exploitation of weaknesses in enemy captains, often combat can feel cheap and even painful. Enemy archers are overpowered and the respawn rates are set far too high. They became a constant thorn in my side and a source of annoyance that held me back from truly enjoying the free-flowing combat that I loved in Shadow of Mordor. Some captains often developed immunities to literally every combat move I had as an option, requiring an impressive, but ultimately irksome, set of hoops for me to jump through to create attacking openings. It would have been so much simpler if every orc captain had at least one weakness you could have exploited in combat, instead the game is satisfied with having you jump in and out of stealth for hours luring them between arrow markers on the map. Impressive for encouraging sandbox experimentation, but in combat terms it is often poorly-implemented and even broken at times. 

Orc recruitment and training is perhaps the biggest aspect of the game, and while it is a fun quest, this is where things start to turn from mediocre to worse. While it is fine enough to gather your army in the open world, especially in the later stages of the game this becomes a slog. One time I lost out on ten hours of progress developing my army because of a cheap love-tap by a captain who happened to have a one-hit kill perk. This is the point where the game is meant to encourage the purchase of loot boxes and microtransactions, and it is so transparently designed that the game almost becomes a parody of itself at this point. It is so clear that the latter part of the game is meant to encourage you to buy the loot boxes that I left feeling that on some level like I was treated to a worse game because of it. 

As for the game itself, it is certainly a ‘bang for buck’ purchase, microtransactions notwithstanding. There is such a mountain of things to do that at first it is intimidating to a new player. This has its own advantages and disadvantages in terms of how inviting and non-convoluted the game is to play, but the sheer size of the package itself is noteworthy. At over 40 hours I still am nowhere near seeing everything that the game has to offer and as a sandbox it is competently designed enough to create the right mood in the player for exploration and play. However, this is also a downside to the game because at the half-way mark it starts to feel over-long, like a painful slog. Enjoyment of the game eventually diminishes to a point that all it will take is a single frustrating battle to go wrong and the player will put down the controller completely.  The game is absolutely bloated and it is a shame to see such promise be underwritten by such a mixed bag, especially given that the maps themselves aren’t particularly memorable on their own; here the only location that really rivals Shadow of Mordor’s maps is perhaps Minas Ithil, but the player only spends a scant amount of time there such that its impression is somewhat missed.

Then there is the plot. There are so many mis-steps here in terms of Tolkien story that the game might as well be considered non-canon, and a face-heel turn toward the end that doesn’t quite hit the right notes. Story was never this series’ strong point. While the setting promises an epic tale that will engage gamers, instead there are a couple of charming scenes where some of the more interesting orcs can shine through. Unfortunately, here it is also a case of bloat where the storyline suffers from feeling padded because of the game feeling twice as long as it should have been.

Bruz is one of the more fun characters in the game.
Screenshot from in-game.

While Shadow of War offers a well-designed open world with a backbone of a great Nemesis system that promises more interesting orcs than the previous entry in the series, ultimately the poor, anti-consumer decisions force it into being a much worse game than it has any right to be. Despite amazing production values and satisfying gameplay, instead the fact is that the game seems at every turn to offer you something to love and something to hate.

Shadow of War is my marmite game of 2017; I have a love-hate relationship with it and it is difficult to occupy a middle-ground at any one point in the game. At some points, you’ll hate where things are going, while at other times you’ll find some genuine sandbox enjoyment, but ultimately the loot chests and terrible post-game create something that I would only recommend if it was at least half of its full-retail price.

This orc knew it, apparently.
Screenshot from in-game.